By the way, natgas is actually much friendlier (well, less hostile) to the environment than coal, if you're looking at carbon/kWh or all of the other things released into the atmosphere when you burn coal.

However, you can much more easily make a giant mound of coal next to your power plant, than store up enough natgas (LNG is much more expensive to store). So, the power plants required natgas to show up in the pipeline, and when the temperature dropped and everybody cranked up the heat, not only in Texas, the natgas pressure in the pipelines dropped. Oil (liquid) and coal (solid) are just fundamentally easier to stockpile than natgas or wind (gas) or solar (light).

A big freakin' battery would help with this, but that isn't a cost-effective option (yet?).

The Natural Gas distribution system just fell apart two years ago.